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You Are Allowed 20 Birthday Parties (Album) - Patton Oswalt
(I should mention that some of this language is NSFW.)
I am sitting here on the 33 year old side of the age divide. I will be 34 in 21 minutes and I feel like I should have some sort of revelation. That there's something I've learned or did or said that will have some sort of relevance or permanence.
I'm sitting here, trying to think of something and nothing is coming to me. This time, last year, I was single. For a week. My girlfriend and I had split for the first time, after New Years Eve. And it was at my birthday party, where we got back together again. I remember being so happy that she was there. So happy that we got back together again. If you look at the pictures from that night... Here, I'll show you one...
..you can see how happy I am that she's there. None of the pain of the past week or so. Nothing but happiness to be with her. I'm so happy (and drunk) that I'm dancing. And I don't dance.
That was my birthday last year. Propelled from the single lifestyle, back into a relationship that lasted another two months before it finally flamed out.
In talking with Gilmore tonight, about something else entirely, I realized that it's a year later now and I'm still talking about her. Just last Saturday, Greg asked me about how that ended and thirty minutes later, I stopped talking. A well-polished, very well rehearsed, succinct re-counting of the sad story of "How I Was Never Wrong And Someone Else Was".
Now, sitting here on the cusp of another year ticking over ... in 11 minutes, I see how shameful and wrong that was. How disparaging of another human being it was. How I wish I had not done that. How I wish I had not been doing that for a year now. How I wish I'd chosen grace over my own petty weaknesses and been better to her. Afterwards. I wish I'd been better to her, afterwards.
So, I'm declaring a moratorium to that story. I'm shelving it away and never shall it be spoken of again. The next time someone asks me what happens, the answer that they get is... "It just didn't work out." If they get an answer at all.
9 more minutes of 33 years old.
Yesterday evening, in anticipation of this birthday party on Saturday, I watched an hour and a half of video of me from high school and college. After viewing the things I did and said, back then... I called my videographer and canceled the project. I hated myself (the person I was then) and not only did I NOT want to show it to other people, I never wanted to see that stuff again. I was an insufferable prick then. Worse than I ever could be, now. So desperate to be cool or smart or funny that I wasted time and energy, tearing other people down.
8 minutes.
6 minutes.
I couldn't bear to watch anymore. And I'm amazed that anyone who knew me then, would still want to know me today. Lord, I was such a bastard.
Maybe I'm blowing this out of hand, a little bit. But the fact remains that there was nothing in those videos that I would want to show other people, for any reason, shape or form. Even though that was my body and I did and said those things. That's not me now. And the person I present today, owes very little to that person. Life cannot be spent, paying penance for the self-perceived transgressions of the past.
3 minutes.
I wish me of today, could've given this quote to High School Me and let him chew on this for a bit. This is from Patton Oswalt's Graduation Speech that he gave at Broad Run High School...
1 minute.
“First off: Reputation, Posterity and Cool are traps. They’ll drain the life from your life. Reputation, Posterity and Cool = Fear.
“Let me put that another way. Bob Hope once said, ‘When I was twenty, I worried what everything thought of me. When I turned forty, I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. And then I made it to sixty, and I realized no one was ever thinking of me.’
Time. And now, I am 34 years old. I am on the other side of that divide. And the last thing I did, at age 33 was post that quote from Patton Oswalt.
Words to take into 34 and apply to the years beyond.
Happy Birthday, Me.
Keep on trying.
Forgive yourself for your mistakes.
Forgive others for theirs too.
Try to learn from them.
Keep Moving Forward.
It's Going To Be Okay.
Cheers,
Mr.B
In keeping with the immediacy of this blog entry, I've selected the final picture of this blog from a file of pics that I keep on my Desktop, titled "Blog Pics". Throughout the year, I occasionally stumble onto a picture that speaks to me and I drop it in there. Usually, they go unseen. This one was pulled from that file and posted as the closest parallel to the themes discussed there.
And now, I post this entry, without edits, as close as possible to the cusp of 33 to 34. Preserved in the electronic amber of this blog.
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